C:\Users\John\Downloads\T & U & V & W & X & Y & Z\Terry Bisson - The Reef

Builders.pdb

PDB Name:

Terry Bisson - The Reef Builder

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REAd

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TEXt

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Creation Date:

02/01/2008

Modification Date:

02/01/2008

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01/01/1970

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file:///C|/3226%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-books/Terry%20Bisson%20-%20The%20
Reef%20Builders.txt
The Reef Builders
"The great thing about diving is the extra dimension," Burt said. "Picture
yourself at the center of a circle. That's your life on solid ground. You can
move in all variations of forward or back, of left or right. North, south,
east, west. But underwater, the circle becomes a sphere.
Infinitely more possibilities. Your brain expands accordingly. That's only
natural. It explains the high degree of cortical encephalisation in dolphins.
Freedom drives cortical development.
Which in turn drives the creation of more previously unimagined
possibilities."
Burt was an American, a surfer, gay, and a believer in the supernatural. He
was remarkably open about all four aspects. In a subtle way, in a clever way,
Cynthia thought, he was in the process of defending each of these. As an added
bonus, he was being a pain in Mark's thick neck. Mark was an engineer from
Perth. The ostensible topic of conversation was ghosts. Burt had once seen a
ghost while diving off the coast of South Africa. The ghost was male, naked,
and had a cement block chained to one foot. Race unidentifiable. His hair had
been long and streamed upward like seaweed.
"There are scientific explanations for underwater dementia," Mark said.
"Nothing to do with freedom."
"The thing is. . ." Burt was getting really excited now. A salty line was
developing on his upper lip, he slammed the table with the heel of his hand.
". . .The thing to remember is that up until the time you begin to dive, you
don't even understand how limited your choices have always been.
You've never even thought about it. Your little life."
"Birds," said Mark.
"Excuse me?"
"Low degree of cortical encephalisation. Bird brains."
"Of course, the raw potential must be there. I thought that was understood.
You might as well say guppies."
Mark and Burt were always on at each other about something. Mark was a flaming
hetero, but there was a sexual tension there of some sort. Not the obvious.
Something more complicated. Cynthia would need weeks to pick it apart. She
would need lots of private time with each, lots of unguarded conversation
about families and adolescent dramas. She doubted her interest would hold up
that long. Best not to even start.
When Burt brought his hand down, he squashed a number of ants. Cynthia was the
only one to notice.
She had become more partial to ants since joining the team. Ants were
builders, too. You could see an anthill, if you chose, the same way you could
see a coral reef -- an oasis of life. Admittedly a less symbiotic one. Ants
looked after ants and damn the rest of us. You couldn't call them selfish,
they didn't think about themselves at all. Nationalistic, maybe, but you

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couldn't hold that against them. Especially not when they were dead. You had
to see the pathos. Moments ago they had been foraging over the gouged and
sticky table. They were very organized, their patterns geometrical. Nature
expressed herself in many ways. Chaos and riot. Lines and crystals.
Unrestrained and inadvisable growth. Cautious exploitation. The heel of
someone's hand. Burt and
Mark. Cynthia finished her coffee quickly, although it was too hot for this,
and left the breakfast table. Surprising that Burt would have forgotten about
the birds, even for a moment. The team was surrounded by them here on the
reef. Birdshit poured out of the trees, like oobleck, Burt said, and then had
to explain what that was. Someone was always being shat upon. The din was
constant. At night it was the mutton birds, howling and sobbing like lunatics.
The mutton birds burrowed and slept during the day, silent and invisible, but
they were spelled by the noddy terns.
In fact there were many reasons to dive. The island smelled of salt. Today,
like yesterday and every other day, would be hot and sticky. No showers
allowed until five pm and even then the water so rationed you couldn't enjoy
yourself. Everywhere was rust and corrosion. You always had the taste of salt
on your tongue, you could feel the salt on your face. Just rubbing your hand
across your skin could scratch. Salt in the air made your laptop stutter.
Cynthia loved it. Salt was her element. She was the most experienced diver on
the team.
She picked her way to the bathroom. The path was littered with the dead husks,
the exoskeletons, of diving equipment. She passed Junco coming out of the
bath, dressed in her bathing suit, a blue sarong around her waist, salt
whitening the corners of her mouth. Junco was from Kyoto.
"Helicopter today," she reminded Cynthia. Her tone was celebratory. They all
knew what the helicopter meant. Imogene, the pilot, would bring them pizza
from the mainland.
Junco thought about food all the time. It was an occupational hazard. Junco
was their expert on bleaching. In return for protection and housing,
dinoflagellate algae named zooxanthellae provide the food coral cannot
produce. Like Imogene bringing pizza. They also give coral its color.
Bleaching is when the zooxanthellae die.
In some years, bleaching events occur nearly simultaneously all over the
world. Junco believed the
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file:///C|/3226%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-books/Terry%20Bisson%20-%20The%20
Reef%20Builders.txt cause was the el nino effect, though she would have been
the first to identify this as an article of faith. It didn't bother Mark the
way Burt's ghosts did. "Unproved, but probable is an necessary scientific
category," he said, though with the air of extending a favor, which would have
irritated Cynthia, but made Junco laugh. Cynthia credited Junco's endless
supply of good will to the way she looked. Even Burt, who should have been
impervious, behaved better around Junco.
Beauty worked that way.
Beauty worked in other ways, too. If Junco had merely been beautiful, someone
at sometime, with no further evidence, would have suggested that she had slept
her way through an advanced degree. But
Cynthia had never heard this said. Maybe it was because Junco could go on
about zooxanthellae until your eyes crossed. Maybe it was something less easy
to define. When the noddy terns shit on
Junco, it was charming. It was a tribute. On the rest of them, it was
birdshit.
Sent By:Karen Joy Fowler on Tuesday, March 4, 1997 at 12:13:04.
Cynthia spent a long afternoon in the water. Diving here was so perfect that
it almost wasn't fun.

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The water was blue and utterly clear. They were rebuilding the reef. Part of
the project involved cloning coral. After they lay down the coral, they were
seeding it with zooxanthellae from Jamaica that was more resistant to
temperature changes and therefore, theoretically made the coral less
susceptible to bleaching. Cynthia was working on the edge of a huge bleached
area. Dead, unpigmented coral stretched away from her along the reef line. A
coral necropolis. A city of stone bones. It should have been horrifying, but
instead it was beautiful the way ruins are. The zooxanthellae couldn't be
seeded in the dead coral but the idea was that seeding along the edge of the
dead zones would create a protective barrier. The zooxanthellae was in a gel
medium that she squirted out of a plastic tube with a squeeze bulb. The gel
hung in the water, faintly obscene.
She'd knocked her hand against the coral and had a bit of a nasty red cut but
one nice thing about her work was that she was constantly soaking in seawater.
It stung, but it wouldn't get infected.
The reef was full of movement. Octopi, smart as house cats, lurked in mottled
camouflage. A nurse shark was gliding up the reefline. Nurse sharks had never
been known to attack humans and Cynthia usually liked them. Today it struck
her as too solitary. Not social, like ants and coral.
Streamlined and smooth. Not fractal. No edges. Predators were elitist.
The dive team got back just before the helicopter came in. Imogene the pilot
brought strange pizza with tiny octopus laying in curlicues. She brought
pepperoni and sausage pizza, too. Burt didn't eat seafood pizza. "It's got
octopus on it," he said.
"I like octopus," Mark said.
"Eating octopus is like eating a cat or a dog," Burt said, gesturing at the
pizza. "Do you know how smart an octopus is?"
"Do you eat pork?" Mark asked.
"No," Burt said. He was picking the pepperoni off his pizza.
"Pigs are as smart as dogs," Mark said, but the point was lost.
"Even if it didn't have octopus on it," Burt said, "I only eat deep water
fish." He told about the time he'd gotten ciguatoxic poisoning from a fish
dinner in Cuba. Ciguatoxin was produced by microscopic creatures that lived
around coral reefs. Reef fish ate the creatures but for some reason they
didn't get sick.
"Did you see your ghost before or after you got food poisoning?" Mark asked.
Burt stopped. "I can't remember."
Junco laughed and everybody at the table smiled. The Junco Affect. A little El
Nino right here at the table, Cynthia thought.
"There are neurological effects," Mark said.
"Not hallucinations, peripheral nerve damage in some people." Burt said.
"Besides, I saw the ghost before."
Cynthia had had seafood pizza in Hong Kong working on a project laying fiber
optic cable for
Nynex. She preferred the pepperoni but not eating the seafood pizza might be
seen as taking sides.
She took a slice of each. She had decided to stay neutral. She always got
interested in what was going on between people and it always left everything
so complicated. Glances became thick with connections and people's bad
behavior had to be explained by their childhood. Not that she would remain
aloof. She would be companionable.
After dinner they all wandered out to look for weather. Cynthia was barefoot
and the uneven and sandy ground felt good between her toes. The storm was too
far out to be seen but the waves were high. Burt was talking about surfing.
Mark stood beside her. Cynthia sat down and brushed something prickly off the
bottom of her foot and Mark looked down at her and smiled. She smiled back.
Friendly. Companionable. Ant to ant.
Mark sighed heavily. It was the sign of a man with a lot on his mind. Someone
looking to talk to
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file:///C|/3226%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-books/Terry%20Bisson%20-%20The%20
Reef%20Builders.txt someone. She was resolute. Oblivious. She sat in a way she
felt communicated friendship and companionship but no invitation to
confidence.
"Are you busy?" Mark asked.
What was there to be busy about? "No," she said.
"I'm thinking that maybe I'm getting too old for this," he said quietly so
that only she would be in the conversation. The others heard his tone and
politely shifted away.
She sighed.
Sent By:Maureen F. McHugh on Friday, March 7, 1997 at 09:06:21.
Cynthia pointed to where long lines of noddy terns, thousands of them,
streamed back to the island from their long day fishing out at sea. "I'll
never be too old for this," she said. The noddy chicks screeched from the
trees in signal to their parents, "Hey, here I am! Bring food fast!
Octopus pizza! Pre-digested!" The noise was deafening.
"Birds and stuff?" Mark looked vaguely up at the sky. "That's not what I
mean."
Uh-oh, thought Cynthia.
"I didn't want to tell you in front of the others, not just yet, not till I'm
sure."
"Mark, you don't have to . . ."
"It's like this. It's seriously weird. That machine I'm testing, the growth
rate monitor. Crap results! I just keep getting crap results."
"You mean work? You're talking work?" Cynthia relaxed back into the sand. A
heady whiff of coral cay rose from her lightly digging fingers. So this was
the best Mark could manage in amorous mode.
If this was amorous mode. Cynthia laughed.
"It's not funny Cynthia! It's all very well for you. You've got Nynex money.
And Junco. She just smiles and NASA gives another grant for good old El Nino.
Global change, global megabucks. But they don't have that kind of money in
Perth. All I've got is this crappy seeding grant, and I have to get results,
fast. Results that mean something."
"What's wrong?"
"I can't get any sense out of that machine! I've stripped it down, checked the
seals, given it a new counter, what more does it want? And still it's messing
me around! The growth rates! Coral just doesn't grow that fast. Not half an
inch in one week!"
"Checked the computer end?"
"Of course I've checked the program!"
"What if it's true? Half an inch a week?"
"Can't be!"
"Yeah. Sounds really off to me."
"I'll rig the monitor with some of the spares Imogene brought. But if the
counter's stuffed, really stuffed, then all our work will go for nothing."
Big trouble, so early, thought Cynthia. And only she guessed why. If Mark knew
what Cynthia knew, or thought she knew. The Nynex report. Cynthia chose her
words carefully. "Mark, you are so right to tell me. Just me. Check it out
first. Before you wreck Junco's cool." If Mark was to know what
Cynthia suspected that Junco just might know. If Nynex knew what NASA
suspected. Cynthia's brain approached burn out.
Mark hadn't finished. He was like a puffer fish. Disturbed into motion, he
continued to puff up to maximum indignation. "That Burt's been messing with my
laptop. You saw him, this morning."
Cynthia remembered. Burt had logged off fast when he saw them. "Just
installing Doom," he'd quipped.
Mark had grown very white about the eyes. "Don't you ever even think of it,"

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he ripped into Burt.
"Only joking," said Burt. He'd left the mess hut fast and jogged off to the
beach.
"I'll go in and change the password," said Mark, rising to his feet. "Now."
When Cynthia was certain she was alone, she took out her flashlight and shone
it on her hand.
Where that morning the coral had cut into her finger, where tonight she might
expect, despite the disinfectant, a nasty red streak from zooxanthellae
toxins, instead, there was nothing to be seen.
Her skin had completely healed. She'd been troubled by the fact for some hours
now.
That night Cynthia slept badly. Giant coral polyps invaded her dream
landscape, clone pitching battle with neighbouring clone, red colony with
orange, yellow with purple. Huge filaments of protoplasm swept the lagoon,
slurping up everything in their path.
Suddenly Cynthia was wakened by an extremely peculiar noise.
Sent By:Rosaleen Love on Tuesday, March 11, 1997 at 19:34:44.
She opened her eyes. There it was again: a low, deep, grinding, more a
vibration than a sound. It seemed to be coming from the bed, the walls, the
floor.
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Could this be ...?
Blinking hard three times, as if to clear her head of a nightmare, Cynthia sat
up. She slept in an oversized "Reach Out and Touch Someone" tee shirt; she
stepped out of bed and pulled on her jeans.
She heard a scream.
She ran to the window of the quonset that doubled as the project's mess hall
and dorm. Her fingertips on the sill told her that the room was shaking; the
corrugated roof was rattling overhead. But the night sky was clear.
Outside, the lagoon was smooth as glass. The threatened storm had died and the
sky was awash with unfamiliar stars.
SSSSKRREEEEEK!! SSSSKRREEEEEK!!
It was the noddy terns. Something had awakened them. They had panicked the
mutton birds, which were sobbing and walking in circles on the sand. Then both
species rose in a thrumming cloud of wings and abandoned the island, their
sobs and screams fadi ng in the distance.
Silence flowed back in, a dark tide--and underneath it, the low grinding
sound, like the hull of a ship on sand. Cynthia could feel it through her bare
feet.
It sort of tickled.
She looked down. The plywood floor was crawling--literally--with ants. Also
walking in circles.
Shit! Cynthia snagged her flip-flops with her toes and closed the door of her
room behind her. She hurried down the hallway, glancing into the other rooms.
Empty.
Empty.
Empty.
The panic she had fought down so determinedly rose in her throat; her heart
was pounding. Maybe not, she whispered like a prayer. She forced herself to
walk, not run, through the shabby "rec room" of the quonset and out the door;
past the empty copter pad, down the bumpy path to the lagoon. The coral sand
was almost bright in the starlight. Toward the horizon the reef boomed with
unseen waves. Cynthia walked until she saw the shapes at the water's
edge--then hurried.
Even in the dark she recognized the two familiar silhouettes: one hip shot and

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lithe as a bird or a girl; the other thick-necked and compact, squatting at
the water's edge.
Burt and Mark. But where was Junco?
"It's the reef," Burt said, before Cynthia caught her breath.
"The reef?"
"It's moving."
"Say that again."
"Bloody fucking on the march!" said Mark. He clicked on a flashlight and
Cynthia saw that he had reeled in the growth rate monitor. He wiped the
dripping LCD screen with his tee shirt. "You know, busting out! Running away."
"What about the dead coral?" Cynthia asked stupidly. She looked from Mark to
Burt to Mark again.
She was beginning to feel like a noddy tern, disoriented.
Panicked again.
"It's the dead coral that's moving," said Burt. He pointed out across the
lagoon, toward the reef.
Mark stood up, dropping the monitor onto the sand with an expensive thud. "I
don't need this bloody thing. I can fucking watch it grow from here!"
"It's the dead coral," said Burt. "Somehow it has come back to life. And
started to move."
Cynthia shook her head. "But that's not ..."
There was a splash ten yards out. Junco stood up like a short-haired Venus,
dripping, dressed in scuba gear and nothing else. She hadn't bothered with her
suit. She wore a long gash on her right thigh like a red scarf.
She was as beautiful as ever, but the easy charm was gone. She strode angrily
out of the water, snatched the flashlight from Mark, and shone the beam
directly into Cynthia's face.
"I think you have some explaining to do!"
Sent By:Terry Bisson on Friday, March 14, 1997 at 10:19:02.
"I don't know what you mean," said Cynthia. This was a lie, of course. She
knew exactly what Junco meant, but she was surprised by the intensity of
Junco's anger. She raised a protective hand to her face. Cynthia had become
more sensitive to light, and right in her eyes like this, the beam was so
bright it hurt. Behind the painful glare, Junco's naked body floated like a
ghost, above it the insect-like scuba mask and snorkel.
"I checked the grids," Junco told Burt and Mark. She gestured wildly, ripping
the mask from her face. The flashlight beam danced over their faces, the
water, the trees, and settled onto the sand at Junco's feet. "The growth is
all in Cynthia's sector. There's no way she could have missed it.
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She's known for days."
Mark had designed the new extension of reef on a foundation of concrete
blocks. At intervals he'd driven steel stakes to form grids; a photographic
history of the grids was to have been one of their methods of measuring and
documenting growth. The first photographs after the base round were scheduled
for a date still five months away.
"So the question remains. . ." said Mark. He sounded so angry.
"Why didn't you tell us, Cyn?" said Burt. He sounded so hurt.
There was a long silence. An odd silence. Cynthia took it apart piece by
piece. The water was quiet because the reef growth had now made a bay of the
beach. No more surfing here for Burt. The birds were quiet because they'd
flown off or gone to ground. The reef was quiet because it was resting or
maybe it was finished. Maybe it had become whatever it was trying to be. The
people were quiet because they were waiting for her to talk.
"The coral is coming back to life," Cynthia said. Maybe they'd settle for the

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obvious. She understood that they were upset because they were surprised. She
had been surprised herself until she'd had a chance to really think it
through. Then she'd been excited. The others just needed the same time to
process it. "Twenty years from now, maybe sooner, -- we were going to lose the
reefs.
You know that. We were losing. This is a victory. Our victory. Our team. We're
coming in ahead of schedule. We're putting things back the way they're
supposed to be. What's wrong with that?"
"I can't explain it," said Mark. "That's what's wrong."
"Burt," said Cynthia. She knew Burt couldn't feel that way. "Tell them about
the medical potentials of the reefs. Our relationship here is symbiotic.
They're no threat."
"What's wrong is that you didn't keep us informed," said Junco. "I imagine
there's more you aren't telling us."
"Burt!" said Cynthia.
Burt wouldn't meet her eyes. He stood, and he had a towel in his hands, which
he draped over
Junco's shoulders. Junco shook it into place.
"We'd better look at her data," Burt said.
"I'll give you the data."
"Just give us your password. You're off the team now." That was Junco, wrapped
in her towel like a queen in her robes.
"Go for a dive or something," Mark told Cynthia. "Don't slam the door on your
way out." He reached over and took the flashlight back from Junco. The
flashlight beam stroked quickly down Junco's thigh and then onto the path. In
that moment, Cynthia could see that the gash was already healing.
"Burt!" said Cynthia.
"Just give us your password, Cyn," Burt said.
Sent By:Karen Joy Fowler on Thursday, March 20, 1997 at 09:53:17.
"It's THX1138," Cynthia said. All the password would give them was her
schedule for seeding the reef and some tables for animal population surveys.
She studied her hand, the unmarred surface of her skin and the way the tendons
shifted when she moved her fingers. Off to the west, storm clouds were blowing
across the stars. She looked for the Southern Cross. It was the only
constellation she knew to look for in the Australian sky and all she had was a
vague sense that it was a diamond shape. The sky was full of unnaturally
bright stars for her light sensitive eyes.
Mark stomped up the path, mercifully taking the flashlight with him.
"I can't believe you," Junco said and followed him.
That hurt, from Junco.
Burt waited. "What else, Cynth?" he said softly. "What else can you tell me?"
"It's communicating," she said. "That's what coral does, you know. All those
worldwide bleaching events, it's all linked." She needed to be down there,
diving in it. She took a step forward, and then another, until the water
lapped over her feet and the sand eroded beneath them, covered them, holding
her there at the water's edge.
Burt came and put his hand on her shoulder. He was seducing her with
friendship. She knew, she knew the whole game; didn't he realize? She was the
one people confided in. She knew all about sympathy at the right time.
"It's all primate grooming behavior," she told him. "That's why we react to a
touch the way we do.
Coral touches all the time, and almost never touches; each organism locked in
the little prison of its stony cell, reaching out to feed. So how does it
communicate? But it does, and not just with its neighbor, but with coral reefs
off Jamaica and in the Arabian Sea."
"Your skin is hot," Burt said. "Are you all right?"
"Weird tropical diseases," she said. "No, really, I'm okay. I'm just, I just
thought everybody would be pleased. The reef's growing. If anyone should be
pleased, it's you."
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"What's going on?" he said softly, insistently.
"It's a communications network," she said. "I told you."
"Is it NASA?" he asked.
She laughed. "Junco has the NASA grant, not me. You know what they say about
solving a crime, follow the money." She felt light-headed and distracted. "I'm
going diving," she said.
"I don't think you should," he said.
"I don't think I have any choice."
He grabbed at her arm but she could see better than he could in the dark and
it was easy to slip away and skip up the path while he bumbled after her.
Burt flicked on the bathroom light and it flooded out, making the dive
equipment cast hard-edged shadows.
"Cynthia!," Burt said. "You shouldn't dive alone. You shouldn't dive at night.
I think you've got some kind of fever."
"Did you know that blood responds to tides?" she asked him. She knew it made
her sound crazy and a little delirious, but it also made avoiding explanations
easier.
"At least let me go with you," he said.
"Aren't you going to go check my results?" she said sharp. She was surprised
at how angry she was.
After all, in some sense they were right.
"Who is it? Is it the U.S. government?"
"It's the CIA," she said, just to see how he'd react and of course he believed
her. She could see him taking it in, trying to reassess her as the kind of
person who would work for the CIA. All sorts of emotions worked in the small
muscles of his face. "Goddamnit," she said, "you'd believe anything. It's
Nynex. They're big in basic research now, trying to compete with Bell Labs and
Lucent and all the rest of that."
"Nynex?" he said.
"Yeah, Nynex. The people who brought you phone service. Sometimes I dive for
them. They have a division laying trans- oceanic cable and they use dive crews
where the cable comes ashore. So they hired me for this." She checked the
tanks. "I need my goddamned watch," she said.
Burt looked stricken. A mutton bird moaned and the silence ended.
Sent By:Maureen F. McHugh on Tuesday, March 25, 1997 at 15:17:02.
Or was it a mutton bird? The wail was like that of a cat growling in low
terror, or a baby bereft of all comfort. The moans came from deep in the
burrows of the earth, under the casuarina trees where the mutton birds nest.
But it could easily have been t he groans of Gaia signalling an abrupt new
shift in evolution.
Cynthia listened and tried her best to understand. Why had she just told Burt
all that stuff? When it was only part of the story? Cynthia brooded. There was
so much sheer chance in all of this.
What if things had once been different? What if bears had be en the ones to
discover fire? Back then, aons ago, at the beginning of the Quaternary. What
if apes just lolled around the savanna, taking in the sun, while it was the
Syrian bear that took it into its furry head to warm its cold cave with fire
from the v olcano? What if it was the bears that led to us? Cynthia would be a
hu-
bear, that's what, and a solitary creature, going her own self-centred
foraging way, a hu-bear in a diving suit, hairy and big of paw.
Burt was rapidly suiting up. He wasn't going to let her go alone. Burt will
see what she sees, know what she knows. Burt will see through her eyes, her
mind, her tendrils, her polyp frills, her streaming protoplasm. Corals are
social organisms, like apes , but not like apes. Corals have connection. The

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social bit, that's what made apes take up the call and tear away. Bears, the
solitary foragers, got left behind.
Burt snapped some fluorotubes and handed them to Cynthia. He was silent,
attentive, as if at last aware that Cynthia had moved way beyond his counsel
now.
Cynthia clipped the glowing tubes to her belt. Punctuated equilibrium. The
punctum point. Their equilibrium has been punctuated, these little coral
animals, their status quo has been upset.
Nynex fibre optic cables, self-organising, self-duplicating, se lf burrowing
though the ocean floor all the way from Hong Kong. Connections. Always
connect, calls waiting with calls outgoing, automatic teller machine with
automatic teller, this dimension to all others.
The sea is full of artificial things if you know where to look. Cynthia knew a
Nynex cable when she saw one.
It's like all the automatic tellers in the world can talk to each other, and
its as if they're starting to talk to us. They've reached a certain point of
emergence when a new complexity arises, swift, energetic, totally new. Their
robot teller equilibriu m has been punctuated, their status quo upset.
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They'd take that leap, wouldn't they, the way the apes took it and the bears
didn't. The automatic tellers would start telling us non-automatic stories.
They'd start off small, perhaps, just dispensing financial advice, then they
might move up to life-s kills counselling, whatever. If their intentions were
benign, that is. But if their intentions were quite otherwise, they could
slurp up all the money in the universe. As coral extrudes a mesenteric
filament to slurp up any newcomer that anchors itself to o close. As Cynthia
extrudes her filaments to latch onto Burt and draw him along with her.
The intentions of the group mind, though, could be otherwise. If not human,
then no intentions either for good or evil. Point of being human, having
intentions. If the Voyager space probe went out and came back again, with a
form of alien life on board, w hat if . . .a story she'd read surfaced in
Cynthia's head. The point of being alien was being alien. Humans, how would
they know how to listen? You'd have to learn to listen, have to know the
codes, of silence, of response.
What if the being was one, yet many? As in this patch of sea. But coral is
life on earth. Coral has co-evolved with humans. Coral has been biding its
time. Coral can cannect.
Whispers. Coral whispers. Cynthia listened carefully. Then she motioned Burt
forward into the deep unknown.
Sent By:Rosaleen Love on Wednesday, March 26, 1997 at 22:49:13.
Cynthia swam expertly and fast, knowing that Burt could keep up with her. They
were all at home in the water--Mark and Junco, Burt and Cynthia. But she and
Burt were the best: American kids, scholarship swimmers.
Two of a kind.
The lagoon floor was eerie and mysterious in the light of the flouro tubes.
Enigmatic ripples, tracks in the gray sand, swiftly passing shadows.
Then, there it was: the reef. Or what had been the reef. Dull gold in the neon
glow, it had left behind the rods of the grid and rearranged itself in two
parallel lines, each about a foot wide, heading out toward the deep water like
a country road.
Cynthia swam back and forth over the lines, and Burt followed, nose to heel.
It was almost fun: an ancient dance they both knew deep in the bone.
Then they swam side by side just under the surface, back toward the
innertube-sized buoy that marked the shallow end of the grid. It was a place
to rest.

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Cynthia swam up under it, and broke surface.
The stars washed over her like spray.
"What the hell was that?" Burt spat, surfacing beside her.
"Glory Road," said Cynthia. "Look, it's no secret that I've been working with
Nynex. I've admitted as much. What I haven't been forthcoming about is exactly
what we're doing. Glory Road is a cold-
water directional linear-growth binary full-duplex supe rconductive coral.
Cable that lays itself.
My own design. But it's supposed to take months, even years, to grow.
Something else is going on."
Burt gulped almost fetchingly; then nodded. "Something is," he said. "Me."
"You?"
"Hyper-Glaxxon, rather," he said. "A medical conglomerate out of Singapore.
They paid my way through Cal-tech."
"Thought you were a jock."
"That was a cover."
"And Jamaica?"
"That was a cover too. The zooxanthellae is a hybrid, cloned from human fetal
tissue. The idea is, if it can feed coral it can feed bone. And if it can be
farmed, it will be worth billions. But of course, it's illegal as hell ..."
"So you're here under deep cover," finished Cynthia. "Me too. Glory Road has
to be tested close to shore and I'm trying to avoid sovereignty hassles."
"So what have we created?"
They both smiled. It was a curiously intimate moment, treading water, shoulder
to shoulder.
Cynthia felt almost as if they were lovers, discussing their firstborn.
The spell was broken by a sharp, loud, ugly crack from shore.
They both looked back toward the quonset. "What was that?" Cynthia asked
stupidly. She knew damn well what it was.
"A Glock nine," said Burt.
"You can tell from here?"
"I saw it in Junco's bag."
Sent By:Terry Bisson on Thursday, April 3, 1997 at 16:39:38.
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How annoyingly histrionic. How self-centered. How very homo-sapiens.
Cynthia finned her hands through the black water. If Junco thought to rattle
her, Junco could think again. "Junco is developing a real bad attitude." She
couldn't understand this. How could anyone side against the coral?
Burt shook his head. "Improper cortical encephalisation, and who would have
thought it? She seemed so nice. Maybe I should go in and talk with her."
"Let Mark deal with it."
They heard another crack, followed by a splash. "She seems really upset," Burt
said. "She's coming out here. Let me go calm her down. Give me fifteen minutes
and then you come in."
"You know how, in a monster movie, there's always one scientist who says
'Maybe we can reason with it'? That's you, Burt." Cynthia was feeling
especially fond of him. She wrapped a restraining hand around his wrist. That
scientist was always her favorite. Too bad he was never around for the end of
the movie.
"And you," said Burt, "are the creature from the Black Lagoon. I mean that in
the nicest possible way." Burt reinserted his mouthpiece, sucked it into
place, and removed her hand. He then sank slowly away. Cynthia watched him
melt from the neck up until he was nothing but a trail of bubbles.
She felt oddly unconcerned about whatever was happening on shore. Burt would
fix everything.

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Anyway, her team wasn't there anymore. She was on another team now. She
decided on a free dive, no air, no weights, no lights. She hadn't done that
often at night, but a free dive had such purity.
It would wash away the taste of Junco's Glock nine and Mark's fingerprints all
over her computer data. She slid out of the tank and let it and the bc settle
onto the buoy. She dropped the fluorotube onto the reef. The water felt warm
compared to the air. It slid along her arms and legs, a perfect fit no matter
where or how she moved through it. Like skin. She heard another crack and then
she dove. The water was so clear she could see the stars through it, pulsing
larger and smaller as the water moved, as if the stars were breathing.
She stroked out toward deeper water. Fish flickered around the light on the
reef, the seaweed snaked and streamed like grasses on a windy day. Cynthia
pulled herself farther down. Her leg brushed something solid and she twisted
to look, but whatever it had been moved faster than she could. She pulled
herself deeper still.
And then there was an explosion. It must have been underwater, because it hit
Cynthia with such force her ears could not recover from it. The water was
filled with sand and bits of debris so
Cynthia couldn't see any better than she could hear. She gasped toward the
surface, the air coming out of her lungs too early, so that she ached from
head to toe by the time she could breathe again. She spent a moment, draped
across the buoy, filling her lungs.
Burt. Burt's air tank. As soon as she could, she swam for shore. She crawled
and kicked as fast as she was able, but it would never be fast enough. She had
an image of a ghost, floating in full scuba gear, casting its shadow like a
hawk over the beautiful, chiseled, bricklike surface of the new reef. Her feet
touched sand and she could already see that something large and limp now
rolled, first this way and then that, in the tiny waves by the beach.
Sent By:Karen Joy Fowler on Friday, April 11, 1997 at 10:15:29.
That crack again and something hit the water close to her. Reflexively Cynthia
ducked under water.
Damn it, according to the movies, Junco was now supposed to explain her mad
scheme, and Mark or somebody was supposed to come and stop Junco at the last
second. Poor Burt. Sweet Burt. If he was still alive he needed help.
Still alive? some part of her mind wondered. Shouldn't she be more upset about
this still alive business? Or about this probably dead business, more like it?
Cynthia couldn't get in close to him without Junco seeing her and shooting
her.
She stuck her head above water. She could make out Junco standing, feet apart,
with the Glock in one hand and the other steadying her wrist like someone out
of a movie. She could see Junco pretty clearly, although obviously, Junco
couldn't see her. Didn't Junco realize that they were both part of the reef?
Obviously not. The reef had cut Junco's thigh but it hadn't started working in
her yet.
Junco had gear on and a tank at her feet.
Cynthia figured she didn't stand much chance on land. (How prettily her mind
worked. Everything seemed so clear. Was that adrenaline? Hysteria?) Big chase
scene coming up. The scientist had gone to talk to the monster, the monster
had eaten the scientist, and now it was time to lure the monster into the
electrical lines.
And Cynthia's own gear was out at the buoy.
She went under water again, twisting and turning like a seal and the muted
sound of the Glock came
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out in the coral. Cynthia was the best diver on the team. Burt had been a good
diver, but Junco, while lovely in the water, was merely competent. And out
there among the coral, Cynthia would be at home.
Of course, thinking about the movie scenario, there were some drawbacks. Junco
was the beautiful one, not Cynthia, and hadn't Burt said Cynthia was the
Creature from the Black Lagoon? Did that mean that Junco was supposed to win?
She dolphined, which was hell on the back but the fastest way to swim under
water. When she had to she surfaced and looked back towards the beach. Junco
had come down to the water's edge and was looking but she was looking up and
down the beach.
Still a long way to the buoy. But she couldn't let Junco stay there on the
beach.
She tread water for a moment. Then she called, "Burt? You okay?"
Sent By:Maureen F. McHugh on Monday, April 14, 1997 at 14:43:07.
But it wasn't Burt or Junco who first came in answer to Cynthia's call. Dead
damsel fish floated in a soft blue belly-upwards cloud past her half-submerged
ears. Dead fish, slap in the face.
What was it with her? How could she feel so remote from Burt's fate? Poor
Burt. All those questions she'd left unasked, about his Mom and Dad, his
adolescent angst, about Hyper-Glaxxon.
Yeah, Hyper-Glaxxon especially.
Another crack from the shoreline, another splash near Cynthia, far too close.
Junco was too damn good at what she did, whatever team she was on.
But what was the other noise, not-quite a noise, something seeping out from
underneath the soft plop of the water? A gentle soft shushing sound, a
near-subliminal burbling, coming closer, closer, near-words, half-heard,
half-sensed, "Peace, Cynthia, all is not as it seems, there are many
dimensions, many sides to this alive-dead business. Hush now, don't call out.
We're coming for you. The time for waiting is nearly over. Glory Road will
take you where you want to go."
Underwater madness. What was it Mark said? You hear ghosts. See voices.
"Cynthia!" came a soft whisper, this time more or less human. There, bobbing
up in front of her, silhouetted against the first faint streaks of the new
dawn, was Burt. He raised his hand, fore-
finger to thumb, in the buddy OK sign.
Cynthia swam towards him, a huge grin on her face. "I thought that was you
exploding! I thought it was your tank going up!"
Burt was not alone. He gestured behind. Cynthia saw a large limp object. Mark!
Burt was towing
Mark! "I took him away from Junco. He's safer out here than near the land."
"You reckon?" Mark looked very peaceful, far too peaceful for Mark, lying
there belly upwards, eyes open, staring at the sky. "Burt, don't you think
he's looking just a little bit dead?"
"What's 'dead?'" asked Burt.
"Burt! Remember? Underwater dementia? Something's happened! We're both off our
heads!"
"You saw what the voices said." Burt waved towards the buoy and swam off,
towing Mark.
Cynthia knew it. Death, life, what's the difference to a colonial animal?
Death is merely the urge to clone itself, to bud little polyps off the end of
filaments and send them floating out into the world.
They shouldn't have done it, Cynthia could see that now. Coral can clone
itself perfectly well. It didn't need humans to give it a shove along. Who
would have guessed that Glory Road would lead to this, that cold-water
uni-directional linear growth binary full-duplex superconductive coral would
turn intelligent on them? Would say, great, now you've nudged us along that
next step up evolution, thanks a million, but now it's good-bye, and thanks
for all the fish. Humans, you're done, like the dinosaurs, and you did
yourselves in.
The Quaternary period in earth's history was ending, just like that, and the

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Quinary was about to begin , and soon words will be something she won't care
about any more. Quaternary, quinary, what the heck. The Quinary period is
starting as of right now, and the corals are in control.
What did they expect Cynthia to do? All she could do was swim along after
Burt.
"Hey, aren't you going to wait for me?" A faint voice called from the distant
shore.
Sent By:rosaleen love on Tuesday, April 22, 1997 at 09:55:38.
It wasn't Junco's voice.
Cynthia stopped swimming and treaded water, straining to hear. "Aren't you
going to wait for me?"
the voice called out again.
It was Imogene! Kicking to raise herself as high as she could in the water,
Cynthia saw the insectile silhouette of the little 444 on the heli-pad, the
rotors still slowing. So that was the shushing not-quite-noise she had heard;
the mysterious voices.
Dementia. She was as nutty as Burt. Somehow, the realization reassured her.
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"Imogene! Look for the dinghy!" she called. "We need a boat. We need help!"
In answer Cynthia heard the cough-cough-snarl of an outboard starting. She
turned and swam toward the buoy. The water was gold, lit from below by the
glow of the doctored coral. The promising coral ...
Snap out of it! she admonished herself.
"It's Imogene!" she cried out to Burt, who was trying to strap Mark--Mark's
body--across the buoy.
It kept slipping off. "The chopper!"
"What's chopper?" asked Burt distractedly.
"Damnit, Burt, snap out of it. I can't handle all this alone."
"What's alone?" asked Burt. Pulling a strap from his waist, he tied Mark's
hands together so that he hung over the buoy, his head just barely underwater.
The buoy rose and fell. Mark's eyes were wide open, and for the first time
Cynthia saw the hole in his cheek where the bullet had gone in. It was hardly
bloody at all. She didn't want to look at the back of his head. She tried to
close his eye s but they seemed stuck open.
"Burt, this is bad," she muttered.
"What's bad?"
Behind her, Cynthia could hear the snarl of the outboard approaching. She
turned and saw the bow wave of the stubby little dinghy as it sped straight
toward her. It, too, was gold.
"Here!" Cynthia called out, waving frantically.
The sound of the outboard dropped to a growl, and the dinghy slowed. There
were several figures aboard, not just Imogene. The police, Cynthia hoped. She
felt a sudden childish desire to see a uniform.
"What's wrong?" Burt asked.
"Wrong?" Cynthia shook her head. Imogene was kneeling in the bow. She was
smiling her usual smile, but instead of her usual pizza she was holding a
vitrine glow-lamp. In the circle of light, Cynthia could see the two other
people in the boat.
One of them was Mark. He was driving, wearing a wetsuit.
The other, also wearing a wetsuit and a tentative, unfamiliar smile--was
herself.
Sent By:Terry Bisson on Sunday, April 27, 1997 at 06:06:53.
How dare Burt clone her? There was no doubt in her mind that it was Burt.
Junco with her passion for weather and dinoflagellates? Cynthia did not think
so. Mark with his rigid cortical encephalisation? Why he could barely work up

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a decent sexual fantasy. But Burt, now. Burt had medical training. Burt was a
surfer boy with no limits he was willing acknowledge. Burt would see the humor
in clones. Two girls for every boy.
Cynthia did not know when she had felt so violated. She had never been more
alone than at this very minute, staring across the golden chop at her own face
on her own body. Just lately, she'd been filled with such a warm, such an
all-embracing -- with a sticky, treaclish kind of love for all living
creatures. Those above the surface and especially those below. The deadly
reef-choking
Crown of Thorns starfish. The great whites. Mark, Burt, and Junco. All part of
the circle of life.
Mother Earth had no favorites among her children, so neither did Cynthia.
But Cynthia did not like this woman with her matching wetsuit and her matching
face. She paddled, upright, at the surface of the water, just outside the ring
of the light. "I know all about you,"
she said to herself. "I know exactly how you think. So don't even think about
it."
"What is you?" Cynthia2 asked. She had a stupid I-love-life look on her face.
Really she was a colossal drip. Cynthia couldn't bear it. She dove and stroked
along the coral road.
Cynthia always thought better underwater. The first thing she saw was that if
she did not like
Cynthia2 then Cynthia2 did not like her. This had the incontrovertibility of a
mathematical proof.
She thought of Mark's frozen eyes. She had better watch her back.
She swam away from the clones and back toward the shore. Because the second
thing she saw was that
Junco was not the sort to murder her friends on the beach. Friendly, happy,
lovely Junco.
Obviously she'd been replaced by a fiendish double. Cynthia could only blame
herself for not seeing this immediately; she should have had more faith. So
where was the original? Dead like
Mark? Or was she somewhere on the island, trusting Cynthia and Burt to come
and rescue her?
And then she saw the third thing. The third thing was that there was no reason
for Burt to clone himself. No reason that Cynthia could think of. The thought
of him dissembling, towing Mark with that feigned imbecility was the first
thing that really frightened her. Terrified her. Gave her a physical chill.
What the hell was Burt up to? And Imogene? Best just to stay away from Imogene
until she had more data.
Now the water was becoming very cold . She tried to surface but she had not
managed to swim away from the dinghy after all; in fact, the dinghy had
followed her in. And then the noise began
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shimmering, shivering, trying to tell her something with its exuberant
doubling, but Cynthia was underwater this time and the message from the deep
was loud enough to knock her out. The last thing she saw was the belly of the
boat right above her head. The ocean in her mouth tasted like blood.
Sent By:Karen Joy Fowler on Friday, May 2, 1997 at 11:30:35.
The lantern light was painful. Time moved in little jumps when she closed her
eyes. Someone moved her head around as if it were an object to be examined,
which should have been a great deal more offensive than it was.
"Cynthia," Burt was saying. "Cynthia, girl, look at me."
"Fuck off," she said. She needed to get back in the water.
"Come on, Cynth," he said.

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Burt seemed a lot more focused, which was good, because she felt a lot less
so. The boat wasn't moving. That was something. Imogene was standing in the
stern, looking out. Mark2 was sitting in the boat, watching her and Burt.
There was no sign of Cynthia2. Small blessing, that.
"Look at me, sweetheart," he was saying.
She looked at him. He had a little flashlight he was flicking in her eyes.
"Quit it," she said.
Her head ached more than it had ever ached in her life.
"Who am I, Cynth?" he asked.
"You're a pain in the ass, Burt," she said.
"She swears a lot more when she's concussed," Mark2 observed. How did he know
how she acted? She was quite a different person from Cynthia2. She had
different experiences. Sensitive dependence on initial conditions and all that
chaotic stuff.
"Where are we?" Burt asked.
"On the beach?" she said, not sure. She sat up and Burt helped her. The world
swam and then she leaned over the side of the boat and threw up. She did
notice that she was throwing up on the beach.
"I need to get back in the water," she said. Being in the water would help. It
would help her head and the motion of the water would be comforting. Although
she didn't want to swim. She wanted to just float there. And the water had
been getting so cold.
"How are we going to get him out?" Imogene said.
Who? Cynthia wondered.
"You're going to stay here," Burt said to her, ignoring Imogene. "What beach?"
"The research station," she said. "Home."
He asked her who the president of the United States was and what the date was.
"I don't remember the date," she said, cross. "It's October. Sometime in
October. Which is late spring because we're south of the equator."
"Is she okay?" Imogene asked.
"I dunno," Burt said. "I don't have much of a practical medical background.
I'm just doing the stuff they do on television."
Imogene was looking out at the water. "Burt!" she called. "Burt!"
"Burt's here," Cynthia said.
"No girlfriend," Burt said. "I'm the copy. The original is still out there,
towing the body around and acting like a complete space cadet."
"But there isn't a copy of Burt," she said.
"Well," Burt said, or that is, Burt2 said, "the world might be a better place
if that was true, but unfortunately it's not. Although the way he's acting
there may not be an original much longer."
"He's got the altered zooxanthellae in him," Cynthia said. "So do I. So does
Junco. Is there a copy of Junco?"
"Ducky," Imogene said, "just ducky. How did you get zooxnthellae in you?"
"Coral cuts," Cynthia said.
"So he's delirious," Burt said. "What, from infection?"
"No," Cynthia said. "He's part of the coral, and you're not."
Burt2 and Imogene peered out into the darkness. Cynthia took hold of the side
of the boat for balance and then jumped up, making for the water and for Glory
Road. She couldn't seem to make her legs and arms work right and she caught
the edge of the boat with her foot and went down on the sand. Imogene and
Burt2 were out faster than she was, grabbing her and pinning her there on the
sand.
"BURT!" she shrieked, struggling, aching, feeling sick.
Burt stood up in the water, rising like the creature from the black lagoon.
Except, she was
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Reef%20Builders.txt supposed to be the creature. Burt was the mad scientist.
It was too complicated. She went limp and closed her eyes.
"Hey guys," Burt said mildly from the water, "you really need to let her go.
She's a lot safer in the water."
"Just come out of there and help me get her to the chopper" Imogene said
through gritted teeth.
"Burt," said someone from farther up the beach. Both Burt and Burt2 looked. It
was Cynthia2. "Come on," she said.
Sent By:Maureen F. McHugh on Wednesday, May 7, 1997 at 06:00:25.
The sun rose swiftly over the rim of the world. Cynthia shut her eyes against
the bright light of the new day.
Once this had been her favourite time, just before sunrise, when the pink of
the sky above reflects in the pink of the water below, and the horizon is such
a soft blur that you can't where sky began, where sea ended. Now the light
just hurt her eyes.
The extra dimension Burt sought was nearly upon them and she hoped it would
make him very happy.
Both of him.
Cynthia tried her best to slither in the direction of the water.
"No you don't!" Imogene planted a foot firmly in the middle of Cynthia's back.
Cynthia's mouth filled with gritty coral sand. Imogene! Cynthia grunted into
the grit. Imogene was more than what she seemed, for all her winning ways with
pizza and her fancy helicopter.
Burt called from the water, the new mild-mannered Burt. "Imogene, I think
you'll find you're making a big mistake. Watch it! They're coming!"
Imogene shrieked as if she'd just caught sight of the Mother of Jaws.
"Run for it!" Cynthia heard Mark2 yell. She saw nothing. Her face was in the
sand. Imogene's foot was on her back. Then with one wild yelp Imogene took
off, running fast and furiously up the beach.
"Roll for it," Cynthia told herself. Running is the old way. Running is for
humans. She tumbled over and over until she hit the water. Then she sank into
the clear blue shallows.
Cynthia lay in the water, face down, eyes closed, and took brief stock of her
life. She had always wanted a career in science but what the heck, that
particular career path was shot to hell these days, what with cutbacks and
ever higher hurdles for tenure. Best go with the flow, seek a new career
underwater. Real science, hands-on stuff. If she'll still have hands in her
new life.
The sea made soft plop-plopping noises. Bubbles of subterranean gas rose to
the surface past rose to the surface from underwater vents.
When Cynthia opened her eyes again, she saw a vast army of legs.
Cloning people. Their research. Big problem with science. You go looking for
one thing, find something else entirely
Like all these legs. Slowly Cynthia lifted her eyes above the water line to
see what showed above.
She couldn't believe her sore eyes.
A vast army of humanoid clones were walking out of the water, heading away
from Glory Road towards the beach. They walked in rough formation, a row of
Marks, a row of Cynthias, a row of Juncos, a row of Burts.
Some of the clones were more human than coral, others more coral than human.
On the beach Cynthia2 stood like Napoleon at Waterloo before her raggle-taggle
polyp-waving army.
"This is war," muttered Cynthia in the water, though deep in her pacifist
heart she meant it in the nicest possible way.
Sent By:Rosaleen Love on Monday, May 19, 1997 at 01:32:40.
"You bet it's war," said Burt, lifting his head out of the water beside
Cynthia. "She's going to call in air strikes or something."
Imogene had made it to the 444. Turbine whining, the little chopper lifted off
and disappeared in the direction of the sunrise.
"That's not what I meant," said Cynthia. The water was warm and less than knee

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high; they lay on their bellies side by side, like kids in the shallow end,
watching the grown-ups.
"She'll be back," Burt said. He imitated Imogene's Aussie accent: "One with
extra napalm?"
"Who cares?" Cynthia shrugged and turned to watch the last of the clones march
up out of the water, onto the beach. Most were more human than coral; the ones
that were more coral than human were struggling in the loose sand. They lay
where they fell, legs windmilling, still smiling.
The Juncos stood at the edge of the helipad, draping themselves in golden
seaweed, veils and trailing trains. The Burts, Cynthias and Marks circled and
petted them, oohing and aahing.
"They look like bridal gowns," Burt said.
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"They are," Cynthia said. "When I said war, I didn't mean Imogene. I meant
this. This ...
convergence."
"I know," said Burt.
She looked at him sharply. "You know?"
The clones were standing in a circle, boy girl boy girl boy, holding hands.
There were almost a hundred altogether. Only the Juncos wore the seaweed
gowns. The others were naked. They all started to sing.
"We all knew," Burt said. "Mark and Junco have been working on it together
since Cal-tech. NASA
bought him the growth monitor. Hyper-Glaxxon brought me in late."
"So why did Junco shoot him?"
"He tried to back out. She took it personal."
"Who wants to die," said Cynthia. It was not a question. "Convergence is a
form of war. It's like marriage. If war is politics by other means, then you
could call marriage 'war conducted in the nicest possible way.'"
"You should have been a preacher," Burt said.
Cynthia laughed. She turned on her back and looked up. The sky was pink, the
water gold. She had never felt so peaceful. The rage she had felt at seeing
Cynthia2 had dissipated at seeing a
Cynthia3 through Cynthia26. There were too many Cynthias to stay pissed at.
Too many Burts, too many Marks, too many Juncos.
There was another clump of clones coming out of the water, but these were far
more coral than flesh, and had no legs at all. They fell into one another,
laughing, while noddy terns landed on them and began to pick out their eyes.
Cynthia wanted to throw them back. But not enough to get out of the water. She
doubted her legs would work anyway. The singing from the helipad was getting
louder. It sounded like mooing.
Cynthia wiggled her toes and smiled. She spread her legs and arms. She looked
down at her elbows, thighs, feet--entirely flesh; it already seemed queer! She
imagined them decomposing back into fats and salts; it seemed appropriate,
symmetrical, somehow tasteful. That made it okay. A Cynthia on the beach waved
and mooed like a cow. Cynthia waved back.
"They're going back into the water," Burt said.
"Good," said Cynthia.
"Shakespeare always ended with a wedding," Burt said. "The comedies, anyway."
Cynthia tried to moo.
"I like weddings," said Burt. "Problem is, I always wanted to be the bride."
"Me, I wanted to be the ring," Cynthia said.
They both pushed off backward into deeper water. Hips and legs weightless.
Burt tried to moo.
"It's not a wedding between man and woman anyway," Cynthia said. The water

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covered her like a veil. "It's a wedding between land and sea. Between
echinoderm and vertebrate. Between past and the future. Between zooxanthellae
and coral."
"Between us and coral," Burt said. "Zooxanthellae is the best man."
"The bridesmaid!" giggled Cynthia.
"The preacher ..."
"The ring!"
Cynthia looked down the beach, away from the sun. The wedding party was almost
gone, the last of them flopping into the welcoming water.
The golden tide rolled in, rolled out. Cynthia wondered why she had always
been so reluctant to die. She wrapped her arms around herself and Burt.
Something was nibbling at her fingers, pulling the flesh quite off. Oh, quite
right off! she sang, sucking a white tip of bone. Look!
But the eye part of things was almost gone.
Moo said the zooxanthellae and Cynthia nodded, golden with the waves, golden
as a ring, yes, yes I
will, O yes.
The End
Sent By:Tbisson on Friday, May 23, 1997 at 10:18:09.
file:///C|/3226%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E...rry%20Bisson%20-%20The%20Reef%2
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